The Ironic Cherry reads...

The Gilded Rage:  A Wild Ride through

Donald Trump’s America

by Alexander Zaitchik

So I’ve been listening to all the debates about what the Democrats did wrong – what Hillary did wrong – to lose the election to the orange-haired psycho.  I’ve heard Michael Moore talk about how the once bustling manufacturing states are now devastated.  I’ve read both Listen, Liberal and The Limousine Liberal.  I have been arguing with people since November about whether we could have won if only…

If only Hillary had spoken to the working people instead of just the minorities.  If only she had not ignored the white people.  If only she had gone to Wisconsin.  If she had not ignored the unions.

And then I read The Gilded Rage.

Alexander Zaitchik is one of those people who wanted to understand the Trump supporter.  Enough so that he went out to “Trump country” to meet and interview them.  It was an eye opener, but not in the way you might think.

As promised, he met with a lot of really nice, reasonable people.  They were not the mad hordes that were pummeling protesters and threatening media at the rallies.  In fact, it was a bit embarrassing to hear about the angry anti-Trump protesters who shouted diatribes and blocked the road at some events.

But still, there was something decidedly off here.  I’m talking about the capacity for logical thinking.

There was the couple who lived near the border, who talked honestly and rationally about how they had lived peacefully with both cartel and Border Patrol, even though both had broken into their homes and stolen from them over the years.  Who knew that “the wall” was not something that would solve any problems.

There was the environmental activist in West Virginia who fought the coal companies after seeing children get sick from inhaling the soot that coated everything, and whose friends and neighbors had turned on him because they saw him as taking away their livelihood.

There was the woman in Wisconsin who had grown up in a middle-class family where the jobs were secure and paid the bills with money left over for a night out, where the benefits included health care and a decent retirement.  Who now worried about supporting herself and her daughter because the jobs had gone to immigrants, or the factories had gone to Mexico.

The thing is, you’d be reading along, nodding your head, thinking you understand, and then they would say, “So that’s why I’m voting for Donald Trump.”  And then your head explodes.

There was a guy, a small business man, who complained about illegal immigrants coming in and “getting benefits that legal immigrants can’t have.”  Who then admits that he employs “illegals.  Pay them cash….  I feel very guilty about it.”

What it is, is a huge disconnect.  A line that begins to get drawn from point A to point B and takes a detour to a whole other alphabet.

And that leads me to wonder how on earth Hillary could have debated an argument that was so illogical.

I’m not saying that the Democratic Party has not made a huge mistake when it began, in the Clinton years and through the Obama presidency, to ally itself with bankers instead of unions.  Bill Clinton has admitted he made mistakes, in his charmingly humble way.  I don’t know that Barack Obama has yet admitted that he should have made the bankers criminally liable for their acts and worked harder to help those who were losing their homes.

I made excuses for Hillary’s alliances with Wall Street.  I still do.  It is the system we have.  I know that our Democratic Party has been quaking in their boots since Reagan hijacked the country with his false promises.  To this day, when most voters don’t know or give a damn who Ronald Reagan was, Democrats can still be counted on to bring him up as an American hero, caught in a political Stockholm syndrome.  Shame on them for hiding in the center, hoping no one will notice they aren’t really who they say they are.

I do know that, in the face of Bernie’s wild success, and when confronted by groups like Black Lives Matter, Hillary listened.  She changed some policy, like with trade agreements, and then took shit for changing her mind.  But she was fighting for women and minorities AND she was fighting to raise the minimum wage.  Even more than Bill and Barack, I believe Hillary’s heart is in the right place.  Because she is a woman, she is better at listening, and because she is Hillary, she really wants to do the right thing.

Meanwhile, there were people who had good reason to be angry about being ignored by those in power, but whose anger was manipulated by the very people who were responsible for their losses.  It was the power of celebrity and the power of the con artist.  And no matter what paths of logic they took, they would always come to the conclusion that they wanted to come to:  the billionaire was going to save them.  He wasn’t afraid to say, well, anything.  So that meant he wasn’t political.  And, ta-da! that meant he would be fighting for them.

Actually, we have learned through hard experience that Donald Trump is exactly the same as those other sixteen republican candidates, just stupider and more impulsive.  And his lies are bolder.  And he is a showman.  Unfortunately, that is a powerful combination in a reality TV world.

Gilded Rage is a short, quick read, and I think it is important to actually listen to the reasoning of these Trump voters.  I don’t think they elected Trump.  I think they were a part of a process that involved Russian hacking, FBI meddling, lies and cons, along with an election system that fails to count too many votes, and ended up with the loser getting three million more votes than the winner.  The election also spoke to thirty years of lies and distortions about Hillary Clinton, so that even reasonable Democrats would shake their heads and say, “I just don’t trust her,” even though they couldn’t tell you a single thing she had been found guilty of.  And, last but not least, the fact that Hillary Clinton is a woman.

Under different circumstances, she still would not have convinced any of the people in Gilded Rage that she would do more for them than Trump.  And it is possible she would not have been able to do much more for them than Barack Obama.  The fact is, we live in a country in which the wealthy control the conversation, and people are too frightened and insecure to question those who wield the power.  And, like the good people in the book, they will take themselves through all kinds of contortions of logic in order to get to the point where they can say, “I’m with him.”

Loving Boeing

Well, Valentine's Day is just around the corner.  And so is another union vote at the Boeing factory in North Charleston.  I know this because, in the way good ole employers have of helping us figure out how to think, Boeing has rolled out some shiny new ads.  Not only that, I saw them during Saturday Night Live, so I'm assuming they especially want to help all their young employees make this tough decision.  And at great expense, I might add.

Here in South Carolina, the people in charge don't want us to waste our money on unions.  Boeing explained that they are just the greatest place to work, they have good jobs with good pay and are just swell bosses.  In one of the ads a very nice looking older man named Scott Hibbs was playing the guitar, and then he told us what a great place Boeing is to work.  And at the end of that commercial, there was the following disclaimer:

VOTE NO

The appearance of any individual employee in this video is not intended to, and does not, indicate whether that individual employee supports or opposes union representation.  Nothing in this video should suggest that any individual appearing therein holds a particular opinion either way regarding union representation.

PAID FOR BY BOEING

So, in case you didn't stop the ad so you could read the fine print, Boeing wants you to know that that nice guy Scott Hibbs wasn't saying he was for or against unions.  If you didn't stop the ad, though, what you mostly saw was "VOTE NO."

I just have to ask myself why a smart employer like Boeing would decide to spend a whole lot of money just to tell its employers they shouldn't waste their money on union dues.  Of course, it did that last time the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers tried to get up a vote for the union.  With Nikki Haley's able pro-big-business, union-busting assistance, Boeing was able to generate enough animosity that the union had to postpone its vote.

Again, why?  If Boeing is such a swell employer, why would they even care if an employee was a union member?  In fact, there are some really great employers out there who are happy to have the union to mediate contracts.

It seems to me that I had heard at some point that Boeing was making employees work consecutive Saturdays.  It seemed that employees with families or even those who wanted to have a weekend off just had no choice.  Just like at McDonald's.

The other thing I heard is a bunch of those great jobs Haley bragged about when she gave Boeing all those tax incentives to come exploit our workers may not be as secure as we would have thought.  According to the Post & Courier, Boeing will be making "job and other financial cuts."  The way I think this might play out is that management might insinuate that joining a union might create an environment in which Boeing might have to let more people go.  And then after the vote they will let them go anyway.  Just sayin'.

In my many years, I've held a few union jobs, and a few non-union jobs.  Without doubt, the best pay and the best benefits came with union membership.  Which is really why Boeing is going to hard-sell their anti-union message.  Don't forget, they moved to South Carolina not just because Nikki Haley gave away the store to score political points getting them here, but also because they were able to take advantage of the absence of a union and pay lower wages than at their Seattle location.

Here in Charleston, the Chamber of Commerce and the Charleston Regional Development Alliance are spreading the anti-union word that a union at Boeing would be bad for Charleston.  Note that besides cheer-leading for Boeing and other big businesses and telling us that a "yes" vote could very well be bad for all of us, Chamber CEO Bryan Derreberry adds, "A 'no' vote doesn't guarantee continued growth in South Carolina."

So I would encourage anyone at Boeing who is wondering whether they should vote to unionize on February 15, don't ask the employer that holds all the cards whether they think you should have some of that control.  Ask a union member.

From time to time I have union members doing some work at my home:  AT&T, UPS and others.  They have all been proud union members.  They understand that whatever they pay in union dues, they get it back in job security, good wages, benefits, and working conditions.  A union means it is not each employee standing alone against management.  It means that management can't change the rules of the game without input from employees.

Boeing is spending a lot of money right now to convince its employees that they don't need to have that input.  "Trust us" may not be the argument you want to bank on. 

The Ironic Cherry Reads...

Out of Sight by Erik Loomis

Simply put, the sixties saw a cumulation of disastrous events that polluted air and water and caused illness and death to workers and communities.  Responding to the outrage of the American people, in the seventies Congress overwhelmingly passed bills like The Clean Air Act and The Occupational Safety and Health Act.  American workers who joined labor unions saw dramatic improvements in wages and working conditions.

But in the mid-seventies, economic shockwaves  rippled through the country, as OPEC imposed an oil embargo that resulted in fuel and food shortages.

As Naomi Klein describes in The Shock Doctrine, corporate and financial power uses times of crises to coerce frightened and insecure populations to give up freedoms and benefits.  The seventies saw labor unions pressured and acquiesce, giving up wages and benefits under the threat of businesses laying off workers or closing down entirely.

The strategy was such a success that states without strong unions and which would offer tax incentives to relocating companies became the destination for much of U.S. manufacturing.  But even better, corporations found that they could outsource work to third world countries and enjoy greater profits without being held accountable for workers' or environmental conditions.  Poor nations with corrupt or weak governments welcomed American business.  Outsourced factories pollute with abandon, and mistreated workers have no recourse to complain.  Corrupt governments and factory owners work hand in hand to provide the goods needed for American companies to continue to make record profits.

And hence, out of sight.

Here in America, as wages have stagnated for decades, consumers look for least expensive goods and are happy not to know about the country of origin as well as the working conditions that exist to manufacture those cheaper goods.  And because we buy those cheaper goods, there is no incentive for corporations to either improve workers conditions in other countries or to relocate back to the U.S.

The vicious cycle completes as U.S. workers continue to lose power over their ability to earn a living wage due to the threat that companies will shut down and relocate to a more profitable economic climate.

The irony is that, while workers in third world countries work for pennies in dangerous conditions to provide us with cheap clothing, toys and electronics, we have been unable to maintain the environmental gains of the sixties and seventies.  We have elected leaders who promise to cut taxes, businesses that cut corners to increase profit and a crippled Environmental Protection Agency, resulting in deadly drinking water, gas leaks that make breathing the air hazardous, and other environmental disasters that we seem to be unable to stop.

Out of Sight is an important book, in that we need to become aware of the effect of corporations with unlimited power throughout the world.  It turns out that what affects workers in Bangladesh affects us all.

 

When Nikki Became a Hero

Once again today I heard a news commentator refer to Nikki Haley's heroic stance on taking down the Confederate battle flag.  It has me worried.

You know, they say even a broken clock is right twice a day.  That makes it one more time than our governor has been on the right side of a debate.

We need to remember that while she is basking in national glory, that she will continue to oppose any attempt to regulate gun use, and that while the symbol of the Confederate flag may have fueled the fire of hate, it was the gun purchased by Dylann Roof that killed nine innocent people.  And while we may find that it was a clerical error that allowed the purchase, it is the attitude that our right to carry a gun is to be protected above all else that made the error all that likely to happen.

We also need to remember that Governor Haley has during her tenure here prevented nearly 200,000 South Carolinians from having health insurance through federal Medicaid expansion.  And that she has continued to curtail food stamp eligibility.  And that she has worked unceasingly to prevent workers from joining together to bargain for a living wage and liveable working conditions.

She has never missed an opportunity to remind us that she has brought jobs to the state, but she has given over $1 billion to Boeing, while doing little to encourage small businesses.  Her jobs program has resulted in less economic growth than all those states who do not give away the store to big corporations to win them over.

She has opposed a gas tax during a time of lower gas prices while our roads and bridges crumble, missing a jobs opportunity that would also bring much needed infrastructure improvements.

We need to keep an eye on Nikki Haley.  She is as ambitious as Lady Macbeth, and she has been handed an historic opportunity to take the national stage.  And to those in the media who don't live here with her she has become today's hero.  And she will take full advantage of that, and she will be helped along by those big corporations she has been courting, and by the most radical right-wing of her party.

The Tim Scott Conundrum

Proving that it's a great day for Tim Scott if not for his constituents, polling indicates that he is South Carolina's "most popular politician."  I try very hard to understand this phenomenon, as I have never heard him utter a meaningful thought.  But this, I fear, is the secret to his success.

Scott has been groomed by the .01 percent who own this country.  To be fair, he has an obsequious, non-threatening demeanor.  Just as Nikki Haley is the woman the right-wing loves to have speak for them, Tim Scott is the black man that the Kochs want mouthing their values.  And I did hate writing that sentence.  But the fact is, Tim Scott is not going to be the person to ever, EVER question the wealthy and powerful of this country.

He is able to be an Everyman whose polite sincerity makes credible the damaging positions he defends.

Of late he is stepping up on the floor of the Senate to defend the Senate's vote to challenge the National Labor Relations Board's recent streamlining of election rules.  With typical Orwellian panache, the right wing is calling the NLRB rule change the "Ambush Election rule."

Scott paints for us a portrait of those evil unions trying to force employers and employees to bend to their will.  In his speech, he talks about "the hyperpartisan, pro-union entity" trying to tear down South Carolina's "pro-business, pro-employee environment."  In a diatribe bringing to mind a schoolyard whine, he claims that the NLRB's general counsel "made jokes about destroying the American economy and call(ed) members of Congress names."

In that hometown manner we know so well, Scott reminisces about those years when he was a small business entrepreneur, and how if the NLRB had had their way, he would have been forced to take time and money away from his small business, neglecting his life's work as well as his employees, to comply with the new election rules in less than 10 days.  In fact, the rules would allow for elections in 14 days, but what's a few days distortion?  And the push behind the opposition to these rules comes from corporations like McDonald's and Walmart.  The modest rule changes would in fact prevent only to some extent the stalling and strong-arm tactics that have been used to keep workers from learning about and joining unions.

Now, Tim's no dummy, in the sense that he appears to have smart people tailoring his message.  In his weekly email, he highlighted his fight to protect us from the evil union bosses by saying that this rule:

 requires an unprecedented amount of an employee’s personal information to be given to union representatives

 By an unprecedented amount, he means cell phone numbers and email addresses of employees.  You know, contact information.  The employer would be forced to collect information -- which they already have -- and share it with the unions, which is what Scott sees as an unfair advantage.  Of course, what Scott's corporate partners would prefer is that union officials have no access to employees.  And the more time they have before a union election, the more opportunity those corporations have to pressure employees to reject the union.  This is the situation that Tim Scott believes is fair to employers.  In reality, anti-union corporations believe that they own the shop and they own the employee.  All others keep out.  And underneath all the sincere concern, Scott believes this as well.

But the thing about Tim Scott's sales pitch is that he talks about himself as one of us.  His only interest is seeing that we get a fair shake, that we aren't taken advantage of.  So when he does the Orwellian flip, he truly seems caring and credible.

And, fact is, I believe that Tim Scott believes what he is telling us.  And he always will, because he will not hear or believe anything that contradicts those who have taken him under their wing.

And therein lies the danger of Tim Scott.

Just a Night's Escape

I know someone who has worked at Wal-Mart for some 18 years.  She works hard; along with back and knee pain she has recently been suffering from a heel spur.  She refuses to get a cortisone shot because the doctor refuses to write her an excuse to get three days off work so that she can stay off her feet while the shot is taking effect.

After 18 years, she makes about $17 an hour.  She will never make a penny more.  Her pay is capped, so that regardless of glowing evaluations, on which pay raises are based, she is not eligible for a raise.  Rather, she figures they are waiting for her to retire so that someone will do her job for much lower pay.

My friend doesn't live big.  She doesn't go away on vacation, she and her husband do their own home and car repairs when possible, and they live well within their means.  But every few months, they head out to Foxwoods Casino and spend a little money on the slots.  They budget how much they are going to spend and assume they will play and mostly lose, but they enjoy the night out.

This time at Foxwoods, they had an amazing night.  Early on, she won $400 and he won $800.  An hour later, she had won another $100 and he had won $400 more.  As they cashed in, they looked like two cats that had both swallowed canaries.

They made their way up to their room, trying very hard not to let others see their excitement, but when they got to their room, they burst into giggles, took pictures, exclaimed over and over how this had never happened before.

Then they hid the winnings.

Not too long after that, they became serious.  They began to talk about what they would do with the windfall.  They decided they were going to do a long awaited car repair and fix the floor in the kitchen.

This is the way it goes for most of us.  Those windfalls these days don't go towards a vacation or even a new car.  We plan to pay down the mortgage, to get that dental work done, to stash the money in a college account for the kids (and hope we don't need to take it out for an emergency).  People who spend too much money gambling or on the lottery are mostly dreaming of a life without burdensome bills and the fear of financial crisis, a life they will never have otherwise.

While the wealthy are stashing money offshore or on Wall Street where they don't have to pay the same taxes we do on our earnings, most of us are just trying to handle our financial obligations.  Our entertainments are modest, as are our plans for the next week, the next month, the next year.

It's just insulting to hear the wealthy and their paid representatives in Congress, most of whom have wealth and job guarantees that we will never dream of having, talk about how we need to pull in our belts.  The taxes they don't pay, that would turn our country around from what has thus far been an inexorable plunge to third world status, the profits they hoard, these fortunes are intended for their own children.  Who don't live by the same standards they expect our children to live by -- it's understood that they should not in their lives have to worry or even work to get by.

And here we are, in the twenty-first century, bad roads, mediocre education, being told we are lucky to live in this great country, with all this opportunity.  Where Exxon can hike the price of gas as high as it likes, but the government won't raise taxes for roads.  Where we are made to believe that we have to choose between jobs and environment.  Where big business controls us with groups like A.L.E.C. while they systematically get rid of our own unions.  And where those big corporate groups and politicians keep us fighting among ourselves over our right to medical privacy and religious freedom while they rape and plunder our country.

And all our hard work leaves us little time, energy or desire to fight for our rights.  So much to lose, and yet so little.   

Our Nanny State

My husband has cancer, and so far chemo isn't helping.  I only bring that up because he has been dealing with pain for nearly two years.  Increasing doses of Oxycontin do nothing to alleviate the pain, only increase his dependence on Oxycontin.

He has been left, at age 76, to skulk around trying to find connections to procure weed in order to ease his pain.  And this pisses me off.  Our legislators, drinks in hand, are quick to point out that marijuana is too dangerous to allow us simple folk access.  Meanwhile, they whine about having to clean up the air we breathe and the water we drink, claiming that the polluters would suffer if forced to clean up our living space.

In defiance of the facts, we are encouraged -- encouraged -- to bring guns into bars, schools, pretty much anyplace except the state and US capitols that these idiots inhabit.  And because facts would prove the need for gun control, they pass laws preventing the collection of data about gun control.

On the other hand, they are concerned enough for our bad behavior that they allow cameras on every street corner and permit police to invade our houses in search of illegal poker games and, of course, medicinal marijuana.

Just as much psychotic legislating goes on regarding our health care:  laws that grant the government the right to monitor our decisions about our bodies, while denying health care to pregnant women and infants.  Death panels?  Not from Obamacare, but from our own legislators, the ones whose stated goal is to protect us from the evils of providing health care to all.

Here we are, listening to bullshit about freedom from the people who are attempting to limit our choices, curb our freedom to live in pursuit of life, liberty and as much freedom from pain as possible.  These are the people who are all too quick to make laws that deny us our rights while granting them to corporations.  Regulate the people, not the banks, or the pharmaceutical industry, or Monsanto, or the Kochs.

So why do they get elected?  In the beginning, this time around, in the 70's, our good lives had some setbacks, and the fearmongers turned us against ourselves.  They had been waiting for their moment, and it came, and so they preached the evils of unions, and regulation, and ungodliness.  And they found a teflon coated actor to lie to us, and the American people bought it.  Morning in America.

And as corporate America became more powerful, even those of us who knew they were wrong began to believe we could not win.  We stopped voting, we stopped fighting.  Our unions compromised themselves out of existence.  Our politicians leaned ever more to the right in order to not fall off the sinking ship.

You don't have to look too closely to see the hypocrisy.  On the one hand, control the individual, with the Patriot Act, with electronic spying, with laws that make our lives more dangerous and on the other hand pass laws that prohibit us from making decisions that would keep us safe.

Meanwhile, my husband would just like to be able to buy some grass so he can get a little rest from the pain.

U.S. Economy's Worst Kept Secret

I just learned that America is no longer a democracy, but an oligarchy, wherein the country is controlled by a few.  Well, you could have blown me over with a feather.  In fact, Paul Krugman warns us of this very thing.  What is amazing is that he warned us of this in 2011.  So why are we surprised?

Not only that, we've become a plutocracy, which is government by the wealthy.  I know, this is another shocker.

Day after day, as the rich get richer and even more of a controlling interest in the United States of America, we continued to be astonished that this could happen -- in a democracy!

I'm looking at this as a kind of a snowball in hell:  the more wealth and power, the greater the wealthy and powerful become.  And the greater they become the faster they become more wealthy and powerful.

Unlike the rest of us, the wealthy and powerful know how to form a union and then they know how to strategize to get what they want (more wealth and power).  They don't really care whether or not you get an abortion just as long as the folks they elect to office keep us distracted by fighting about it while also, that's right, legislating greater wealth and power for the wealthy and powerful.  And as long as they can keep us fighting amongst each other over whether to feed the hungry they figure we aren't going to much notice that they are growing the national debt by:  giving more to the wealthy and powerful.

I'm not much into history; after all, I am an American.  But of late I am learning an awful lot about the Gilded Age, wherein the cruelty and excesses of the wealthy and powerful actually led to the great reforms of the Progressive Era.

And I am being told that we are in the midst of a new gilded age.  One of the things that concerns me though is that we seem to be unable to move ourselves into the new progressive era that, according to history, should follow.  Are we that much better off?  Are perhaps not enough poor children dying?  Will Obamacare and food stamps cause us to survive just enough to keep those billionaires going while not giving us the strength to fight for more?  Are we like the frog who is put in a pot of water at room temperature and then the heat is turned up so we die so gradually we don't even notice?

I'm  not suggesting that things should get worse so that we can decide we need to fight to make it better.  But it seems that that is the way it's going.  The gains are too small, too few, too far apart.  By the time we get an increase in the minimum wage, it will already have been shrunk by the increases in the cost of living.  Hail Obamacare, but the insurance industry has made sure that it's the middle class and the government that are getting gouged with rate increases, and the poor will still have to struggle with co-pays, deductibles, and all those other economic creations that have made health care in the U.S. unattainable by so many.  The insurance industry will continue to be, that's right, wealthy and powerful.

My father was a tool-and-die maker.  I never really knew what that was, but he earned a living.  He had job security.  And the rise of the unions was recent enough that he understood their importance.  That generation would have gone on strike, picketed, and risked imprisonment or worse if there was a threat to their livelihoods, because they were close enough to know what it would be like if they did not.

But my generation lacked that knowledge.  We had always known job security, a living wage, benefits, overtime, health care coverage, sick pay, retirement benefits.  We grumbled about having to pay dues.  And I believe this is why, when the economy hit that big rough patch in the 70's and the big businesses began to ask unions for concessions, they began to concede.  And it hasn't stopped yet.  We first caved because we thought if we were reasonable, our employers would as they promised, make the concessions temporary.  Blue skies ahead.  Then we caved because we could lose our jobs.  Then we caved because some of us had already lost their jobs.  Then our employers screwed us anyway.

And like a bully who is angry that nobody likes him, capitalists continue to have tantrums because their great profits are not great enough, that they are expected to contribute to the society without which they would not have that wealth.  And they are angry because anger works.  We are intimidated.  Afraid of losing what little we have.  And those of us who are still making it are terrified of the time when they might join those long-term unemployed, the uninsured, the homeless.  And terror has made us powerless to fight the bullies, so we fight those with even less than us.

Unions?  We gave ours up while corporate America was growing theirs.  They have PhRMA making sure drug prices stay high while government regulation shrinks.  Then there is the agricultural lobby, that this year assured that big farms would continue to receive subsidies (although they are apparently calling it crop insurance now) while cutting food stamps for the poor.  The oil industry has been strangling us with increased gas prices, and the environment with its careless drilling practices.  And then there are the "pan-unions," like American Legislative Exchange Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Enterprise Institute, and Americans for Prosperity.  The latter is owned and operated by those uber-plutocrats, Charles and David Koch, whose father was one of the original members of the John Birch Society, and whose oily hands are into every aspect of our lives.

And all the while all these big fat capitalists who rise in fury at the thought of a mandated living wage are spending fortunes in advertising and in political campaign funding to convince us that all those things that are good for the country will take food out of our own mouths.  That the price hikes since Obamacare are not just more of the same profit game but are caused by those deadbeats who don't pay for insurance.

I don't know what it will take for us to look out and see who the real bad guys are.  I don't know if I will see a new Progressive Era in my lifetime.  I do know that things change, they have before and they can change again.  Against all odds.  Because we have done it before.    

Nikki and Vincent -- The Same Old Song

It's been four years, but it might as well be yesterday.  Oh, wait, it was yesterday.  South Carolina Nikki Haley is beating Democratic contender and state senator Vincent Sheheen to a pulp, while Sheheen tries to defend himself by proving he's not really a Democrat.

Sheheen is throwing around big hard-to-understand words like "ethics" while Nikki keeps talking about "jobs."  Listen, Vincent, nobody really cares about Nikki's dirty dealings -- these are the people who voted Mark Sanford into office, and then re-elected him and then sent him back to the US House of Representatives.  Don't you get it when you get those blank looks when you talk about "ethics?"  All your talk about ethics reform got nothing but hot air from your friends across this aisle this past legislative season.  What I'm saying is, you should take that as a hint.

Meanwhile, Nikki is the expert at quick, snappy words like "jobs."  She has been selling out South Carolinians for what seems like forever, giving away millions of tax dollars to bribe businesses into town.  Boeing has been her mantra.  And Vincent doesn't seem to be there when it comes to running down the figures.  She's quick to tell you how many jobs she created, but not how many of them were good paying and upwardly mobile.  And why isn't Vincent talking about how much it's cost us in tax dollars per job?  Or why that money wouldn't have been better spent on teachers' salaries?

And as far as the cyberattack on our tax records, Nikki has had no problem turning that into a win.  She apologized (sincerely...) and we all got a year of free credit monitoring.  We got over it; maybe it's time for Sheheen to talk about the other dumb ways Haley is pinching our pennies.

The Medicaid expansion is a primo example.  Except what's sad about that is that when Sheheen brings up Haley's refusal to accept federal money to insure the thousands of uninsured, he twists himself into a pretzel to deny that by promoting this he is backing President Obama.

And Nikki has a blast blasting Vincent for his "hypocrisy on social issues."  What she means of course is that Sheheen doesn't really support gays or women's reproductive rights, but he wants our votes anyway.  Same for unions.  And because he is refusing to take a Democratic stand on these issues, she is able to slam him for hypocrisy.

And in the ultimate irony, our own Jim Clyburn says, "To me, Sheheen is as conservative as anybody else."  If this is the endorsement from one of South Carolina's most influential Democrats, well, I guess Sheheen really doesn't need any enemies.

So what we have is two anti-gay, anti-women, anti-union contenders for the governorship.  One of them knows exactly what we want to hear ("jobs") and the other keeps trying to tell us he's going to deliver something different.

And what I'd like to know is, when are we going to get a Democrat to run for governor? 

  

Loyalty

Forget about the elephant and the donkey.  Imagine instead a growling rottweiler and a houseful of scrappy cats.

Like most Democrats, I am proud of our willingness to think independently.  But this has also become our Achilles' heel.  We mostly go about our business and believe strongly in what we believe in, and acknowledge that others may have a different opinion, and we all have the right to live by our beliefs as long as they don't interfere with another's rights.  We also tend not to go out of our way to fight for interest groups other than our own.

So we have ended up each of us on an island, fighting our own battles, while being outfunded and inevitably outvoted by a group that knows how to unite.  No matter the anti-abortion faction, in the name of being "pro-life," stands by the gun lobby.  And those who are absolutely rabid about cutting the deficit will wholeheartedly support spending whatever it takes to "protect our borders."  Small business owners donate to politicians whose raison d'etre is channeling government money to big corporations.  Here you see united the anti-government forces with those who try to pass laws against blacks (voter ID), the poor (Food Stamps), women (contraception and abortion), LGBT (gay marriage).

And among all those contradictions, they all stand firmly behind their brand:  the GOP.

Meanwhile, corporations control our government while we scrabble to keep or win individual freedoms, each of us fighting our own battles.

Here in South Carolina, our Democratic politicians are afraid to speak of contraception, abortion, sex education.  They throw around phrases like workers rights and job creation without ever uttering that foul and frightening word "union."  Black voters are so aware of the deck being stacked against them that many don't vote; women pretend that their bodies are not being violated by laws that would force them to carry a pregnancy to term or deny access to contraception, as well as by the fact that the anti-abortion movement has pronounced their mission as sacred, declaring the rest of us to be sinners carrying the banner of satan.

We should be united.  The abortion fight is about whether the government should have the power to decide a woman's medical decisions.  The immigration battle is about whether the government has the right to stalk and detain those who "look different."  The battle for LGBT rights is about the government choosing which citizens get individual rights and which don't.  The voter ID fight is to keep those in power who will take away the freedoms of all of the above.  As is the demonization and outlawing of unions.

Because we are not united, we are constantly being attacked, from all sides, and end up lost and demoralized.

We need to be unafraid not just to stand up for our own rights, but for all individual rights.  The African American community needs to stand by women's right to reproductive privacy, and the the unions need to stand by the LGBT community, and their rights to the same liberties as us all.  We all need to fight for the right to vote, because we are really all in this together.

This upcoming election season, we need to demand courage from our politicians.  We need to demand that they support ALL of us, fearlessly.  And we need our politicians to unite when they run for office, rather than continue to behave like a clutter of cats.

And we need to see our politicians stop being willing to sell us out, one constituency against another, or as they like to call it, "reaching across the aisle."

Let's start forming some coalitions, and working for each other as well as ourselves.  If they don't vote for us here in SC, well, they probably weren't going to anyway.  And at least we will be able to be proud to be Democrats.

And when we stand together and fearless, well, you never know what will happen.


   

The Corporate/Government Union

I live in a "right-to-work cheap" state.  But I can guarantee you that I would be working for a lot less than my $11.00 per hour if unions had not raised wages and improved benefits and working conditions up north where them damn Yankees live.


The non-union workers who are bitter about the good deal the government workers in Wisconsin are trying to preserve should know that as their union's power gets whittled away, our working conditions here in South Carolina will continue to worsen.


Be advised that all those governors who have begun to enact bills similar to that that is getting rammed down the democrats' throats in Wisconsin are working together.  Their goal is not balancing the budget -- Governor Walker put in some tax cuts for his business buddies just before he noted that, oops, now we got a budget that's not balanced.  The goal is a conservative movement goal, taking power out of the hands of the people so that management (including Walker) can make more out of less -- more profit out of lower wages.


The prank call that was ostensibly by David Koch should have us all incensed, not that Walker said anything surprising, but that he has that kind of relationship with one of the biggest corporate entities in the country.  In fact, even though Governor Walker is concerned about his state's deficit, he included in the deadly bill an item that allows for no-bid contracts.  You may recall Halliburton and no-bid contracts in Iraq.  That is where, instead of getting the best deal for the taxpayer, the corporate bedfellow is able to steal huge amounts from the government because there is no competition.


Of course, Walker has some sweet rationalizations for why no-bid contracts, uniformly seen as bad, undemocratic, dishonest, sneaky, and, well, bad, are actually going to help balance the budget.  So that a few years down the road, Koch has pocketed a small fortune from the state of Wisconsin, Walker has pocketed favors and maybe even a nice new non-government job, and the media is able to act incensed that this has happened.


Well, just so you know, it is happening now.  In a few years, Wisconsin's schools will be the worse for this Macchiavellian deal, the budget deficit will indeed be large, and Walker will continue to contend that he tried to straighten things out, but those darned unions wouldn't just go away and die quietly.


And there will be those voters that will say, yeah, you know, it's those unions.